Borel
Type with Purpose
Good typography guides attention, improves understanding, and makes communication effortless.
The Anatomy of a Typeface
By FontSide · June 2026
Every typeface is a system of decisions — about stroke contrast, x-height, spacing, and rhythm. The best ones feel invisible: you stop seeing the letters and start hearing the voice behind them. That transparency is the hardest thing to design.
A high x-height opens up the counters and makes small text breathe. Tight tracking pulls a headline together; loose tracking gives a caption room to exhale. None of these choices are accidents — they are arguments about how reading should feel.
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Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource/borel2. Import in App
// Please select at least one weight and style3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Borel", cursive;
}Google Fonts CDN
Use Google's CDN to embed the fonts directly via HTML.
HTML <head>
<!-- Please select at least one weight and style -->Fontsource CDN
Skip the build step by adding this directly to your global CSS file.
Global CSS
/* Please select at least one weight and style */Background & Story
What typographic factors should be considered when teaching reading and writing simultaneously? Initiated in 2017 at the ANRT (research post-master, Nancy, France), this font project was developed in collaboration with teachers and speech therapists, aiming to question educational typographic conventions and explore non-disruptive solutions.
The traditional cursive style taught in French primary schools has a high ascender/x-height ratio, arguing against its legibility at the size of practice. This can pose a challenge for all beginner readers, particularly those with learning disabilities. Thus, Borel aims to harmonise cursive strokes with more common typographic structures that are recognised for enhancing readability. This typeface, named in tribute to Suzanne Borel-Maisonny (a French pioneer in speech therapy), features a robust design with a low contrast and a generous x-height. The letters are intentionally open and clearly differentiated while adhering to the conventions of writing in French schools.
Due to the specificity of this project, the font only supports a limited set of glyphs allowing writing in Catalan, Danish, English, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese—and by extension, any other languages using the same alphabet. Please submit language requests with images in the issue tracker of the repository linked below.
Find the complete article here: Français | English
To contribute, please see github.com/RosaWagner/Borel.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource/borelDesigned by
Rosalie Wagner
Links
License
OFL-1.1